


Oblivion

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-29
Updated: 2013-04-29
Packaged: 2017-12-09 22:29:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/778702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by Regina's conversation-that-wasn't with Henry in The Evil Queen, all the times with Regina that Emma can't remember.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oblivion

Sometimes she rages, sometimes she cries, sometimes she just sits with Emma and pretends that this is the first time they'd met again, when she hadn't been so terrified of what this woman might take- _has_ stolen, now- from her. 

 

She haltingly admits to snippets of her past, with Cora and Daniel and Snow and desolation. She shouts about the damn cricket, makes wild accusations to a nonplussed Emma, and twice drops her head and pride and admits that her alliance with Cora had been _wrong, wrong, wrong_. She hurls threats toward Snow and Charming and Emma and retracts them in a moment, and she's never felt more in touch with herself than when she's with Emma. 

 

And Emma listens more often than not. She's exasperated by Regina's anger and sympathetic to her helplessness and silent, so silent, when Regina falls to heartwrenching admissions of a thousand chances caught and destroyed. She seeks to connect with Regina in ways that Regina hasn't seen in a lifetime, seeks to make sense of the mess they've wrought together in this never ending storybook battle (and storybooks are always cruel to their queens, but it seems to Regina that it had ended faster in the books, the pain and suffering gone with death. There's a dangerous part of her that still craves the absolution of oblivion).

 

Emma's quietly encouraging and regretful and Regina craves their conversations, the easy camaraderie and the desire to understand and Emma's face parting like the clouds for the sun as she speaks and a smile breaks out onto her face. And for a moment, there's something close to friendship and Regina hurts for what never can be. 

 

Regina kisses her once out by the docks one day, overwhelmed and needy and falling just a tiny bit in love. Emma folds into the kiss, confusion melting into affection into desire, and for an instant in time something magical might have happened that could have shaken Storybrooke to its core, could have rewritten all the storybooks into something worth reading. And Regina pauses as they part, gazing at wide eyes and swollen lips and the possibility of a future not quite as grim, and dreams of a world where none of that terrifies her as it does.

 

But she isn't nearly presumptuous enough to believe in happy endings, and certainly not for someone like her.

 

She waves her hand once as she's done a hundred times before and wipes the memory of their encounter from Emma's mind. 


End file.
